**Date:** January 3, 1894
**Source:** Lenin Collected Works, vol. 28
**Pages:** 238-245

FR. ENGELS. "INTERNATIONALES AUS DEM VOLKSSTAAT"

Friedrich Engels: "Articles on International Themes from the *Volksstaat*" (1871–1875). Berlin. 1894.

**PREFACE OF 1894**

In the Preface (January 3, 1894) Engels says, among other things, that in all these articles (1871–75) he calls himself a communist, and not a social-democrat, because at that time social-democrats was the name adopted by Proudhonists in France and Lassalleans in Germany (p. 6).

"For Marx and for me it was therefore a sheer impossibility to employ, for the designation of our specific point of view, an expression of such elasticity. At the present time matters stand otherwise, and so this word may, perhaps, pass, although it remains inexact for such a party whose economic programme is not simply socialist in general, but directly communist,—for a party whose political final goal is the overcoming of the entire state, and consequently also of democracy. The names of actual (*Engels' italics*) political parties, however, never fully correspond to them; the party develops, the name remains" (p. 7).

**"THE BAKUNISTS AT WORK"**

"The Bakunists at Work" (1873). Conclusion... "The Bakunists in Spain have furnished us an unsurpassable example of how one must *not* (*Engels' italics*) make a revolution" (p. 33).

**"A POLISH PROCLAMATION"**

Ibid. "A Polish Proclamation" (June 11, 1874)

"The background of the whole European militarism is Russian militarism. The Russian army, which during the war of 1859 stood in reserve on the side of France, and in 1866 and 1870—on the side of Prussia, thereby made it possible for the greatest military power at any given moment to defeat its opponent singlehandedly. Prussia, as the first military power of Europe, is directly a creation of Russia, although subsequently it has unpleasantly outgrown its patroness" (p. 35).

(P. 38)... "After the Napoleonic wars Russia, moreover, took the lion's share of the former Prussian and Austro-Polish provinces and now openly appeared as the arbiter of Europe; this role it continuously played until 1853. ... During the revolutionary years the suppression of Hungary by Russian troops was as decisive an event for Eastern and Central Europe as the June Battle in Paris was for the West (p. 38)....... in Europe, together with the rule of Russia, the rule of reaction was also sealed. The Crimean War freed the West and Austria from the insolence of the Tsar.... We have already seen above that the Russian army forms the pretext and foundation of all European militarism.... Only because in 1870 the Russian army prevented Austria from taking the side of France could Prussia defeat the French and complete the creation of the Prussian-German military monarchy" (38)....

Talk of the "essentially aristocratic" character of the Polish movement is "absurd" (39).

"Poland is placed by its entire historical development and its present situation even far more than France before the alternative—to be revolutionary or to perish" (39)....

In 1870 the Polish (émigrés) sided for the most part with the Commune... "was that the deed of aristocrats?" (39).

"Polish aristocracy clings more and more closely to Russia in order to reunite Poland at least under its domination; the revolutionary masses answer by offering an alliance to the German workers' party and fight in the ranks of the International" (39).

"**A people that oppresses other peoples cannot itself be free. The armed force which it needs for the suppression of other peoples will in the end always be turned against itself**" (40)—addressed to Russia: the uprising of Poland "is a necessity... **for the Russians themselves**" (NB) (40).

**"SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA"**

"Social Conditions in Russia" (1875)

..."The great bourgeoisie of Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, which in the last ten years, particularly through the railroads, has developed at an unprecedented rate... the whole of Russian large industry, which exists only by virtue of protective tariffs,... do all these influential and rapidly growing elements of the population have not the slightest interest in the existence of the Russian state?..." (p. 52) (against Tkachev)

A Postscript (1894)—to the article "Social Conditions in Russia" ends with the following phrase:

"It (the revolution in Russia) will not only tear away the great mass of the nation, the peasants, from the isolation of their villages, which constitute their *mir*, their universe, and bring them to the broad arena where they come to know the outside world and thereby themselves, their own position and the means of salvation from their present misery, but the Russian revolution will also give a new impetus to the labor movement of the West, will create better conditions of struggle for it, and thereby accelerate the victory of modern industrial proletariat—a victory without which present-day Russia can arrive at a socialist transformation of society neither through the commune nor through capitalism" (p. 72).